Blake Aued profiled the (surprise!) open seat for State House 117 in Flagpole yesterday, noting three candidates in the race: Doug McKillip, running as a Republican (bet you wondered…); Deborah Gonzalez, running as a Democrat; and Houston Gaines, running as a Republican. It’s been well-known for about a month that Gonzalez was running in the district that has been trending left in recent elections. She announced her campaign kick-off on June 10th, which was profiled in Flagpole, the Athens Banner-Herald, and The Oconee Enterprise. Of course, folks were assuming at the time that Quick would be running for a fourth term.

But hold the phone.

Brian Robinson of Nathan Deal and Lynn Westmoreland fame sent GeorgiaPol.com a press release yesterday about Gaines’ solid fundraising numbers. The first sentence:

Republican Houston Gaines reported today that he has raised over $65,000 in under two weeks as he launches his bid for the open state House District 117 seat.

To the campaign, the big news was the amount raised “in under two weeks.” To the rest of us, the big news was “the open state House District 117 seat.” Never fear, Blake has the explanation:

Quick is not running for re-election and signed off on Gaines’ announcement, according to one of his campaign advisors, Brian Robinson, a former spokesman for Gov. Nathan Deal.

She is widely rumored to be Deal’s pick to replace the retiring Superior Court Judge David Sweat. If she is appointed, she will have to resign her House seat, and a special election will be held. If not, the primary will be in May 2018, with the general election the following November.

Well, no wonder everyone announced so early.

This means your next state rep from the Athens area will be either the Democrat-turned-Republican who only has campaign cash because he loaned it to himself or one of the two first-time candidates. The new guy, by the way, is in his early 20s and was most recently the University of Georgia’s student government president in 2016. He also ran Nancy Denson’s campaign for mayor of Athens three years ago.

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Holly Croft

Holly is an archivist at one of Georgia’s institutions of higher learning. In a past life, she was a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. She cares a lot about records management, open records laws, and privacy laws. Political persuasion? It’s complicated. What’s not complicated is that she’s proudly equal parts Bulldog and Tar Heel.

9 Comments

ricstewart

I thought it would’ve been interesting to see a primary between Regina Quick and Jody Hice.

This district is imminently winnable by a Democrat. The state party needs to get its act together and press this election. Giving up this seat to another Republican, in Athens(!) would be an act of gross political incompetence.

Most of Athens is part of 118 and represented by Spencer Frye. Regina’s district (117) covers the part of Athens over by Athens Academy but includes chunks of Oconee (Bogart) and Barrow Counties. I think Chuck Williams in 119 also has part of the east side of Athens. I still think 118 is winnable for a Democrat, but the legislature has made sure that the district was diluted with plenty of Republicans.

Don’t even get me started on Bill Cowsert and Frank Ginn being the only two State Senators covering Athens-Clarke County.

Last month I saw Deborah Gonzalez picking John Barrow’s brain at a local coffee shop. Her people have been passing out fans at Athens’ farmers market and she’s spoken informally to two groups that I know of.

The majority of the district’s active registered voters are in Clarke (56% as of the last general election), but the remaining 44% indeed are (combined) in the surrounding GOP enclaves of Barrow, Jackson and Oconee. Trump did as noted only narrowly win the district last time, but in 2014 both Senator Perdue and Governor Deal each carried it by a 10-point margin. The district voted Republican in every statewide contest in 2014, so the question next year would be whether “anti-Trump” is enough to motivate a high Democratic turnout in the Clarke portion of the district? In the 2016 presidential primary, the district cast about 8,000 votes in the GOP primary and 5,000 on the Democratic side, with Trump edging out Rubio here 32-29% (24% for Cruz) and Clinton leading Sanders 54-45% (one of the closer House districts in the Clinton-Sanders contest. Sanders obviously appealing to white liberals in the area, as this district is just 15% black in voter registration).